A boring factual retelling of the complete history of the world

Creation unfolds into existance at the unknowable whim of the DemiUrge, an alien intelligence and presence so vast that nothing within creation can comprehend it. The Primarian gods are born from the first wave of Spiritual Emanation generated by the DemiUrge. The waves of spiritual propagation continue until seven ranks of spirits are born. This action also brings alignment to the still forming aspects of creation and stabilizes it.

Once creation is stable, the first of the Ancient Races appear. These include Dragons, Kraken, true Giants (60+ feet tall) and other creatures of incredible size, magical power, and longevity. These creatures create a sort of garden like state of things in creation while the gods create the Celestial City, the moon Luna, and other great works. The courts of the elementals are also forged, though the first elementals are massive on the scale of the Ancient Races.

The Lesser Races - After an unknown amount of time, presumably on a scale of tens of thousands of years, the first of the lesser races appear. Roughly the same size as humans or the larger ogre, these races were quite alien by human standards. While certainly intelligent, the bloodstock of these mortal broods were drawn from reptiles, amphibians, birds, and other strange and often exotic species, almost in an experimental fashion. These would worship and fear the massive members of the Ancient Races and through them would offer prayers to the gods in the Celestial city.

Aisling Boccob and the Promethean Flame - During this time of new races, the Segundian deity Aisling Boccob commited what is considered the First Sin against the gods. The Segundian brought to the mortal races the power of arcane magic. This empowered the mortal races and reduced their dependance on the Celestial Magic of the clerics of the gods. As punishment, Aisling Boccob was made a prisoner within a golden orb hung in the heavens, the Sorcerer’s Moon, Aura.

The Establishment of Linear Time
Prior to the imprisonment of A. Boccob, time moved in a circular fashion, endlessly turning back on itself. After the bondage of the Promethean Aisling, time was established as a linear force and years began to be counted.

The Usurpation EventEstimated Date 6000 BCE

It is estimated that some 3000 solar years passed after Aisling boccob was imprisoned and the events of the Usurpation began. Desiring absolute dominion over all of creation, one of the Primerian Gods in secret began to forment a rebellion among the disenfranchised among the Segundian and Tercerian gods. With the aid of the Primerian of Air and Leadership, this celestial host would rise up and lay siege to the Celestial City and claim absolute dominion. Of course, the lesser gods were told something somewhat different, that they would be installed as a divine congress, a celestial beauracracy in place of the current celestial oligarchy.

The War for Luna
The first battles of the war were fought on the cold and previously pristine surface of the moon Luna. Long the abode of the Primerian of Water and mysteries, the host appeared and the battle was joined. Many of the attackers were defeated and cast into the void, but the Primerian of Water was captured and surrendered in the face of godslaying weapons. The face of Luna was scarred frmo the battle, with the palaces there shattered and broken, many of the once lovely white mountains shattered into broken spires and the fields of silver were left pitted with black craters.

The other Primerians left for Luna to discover the cause of the commotion, visible even in the Celestial City. The uprising was a cause of great consternation for the Primerians who sought to return to the Celestial City to deliberate on the matter. They found the gold and jade gates closed to them, and the entire Celestial City under the control of the Primerian of Air and his army of disloyal gods. Many had been previously weaker, but had been bloated from the coffers of the Celestial City, making them more powerful than before.

The Battle of Betrayers
The gates of the Celestial city were broken an fire vied with lightning as god battled god in the heavens. this quickly spilled out of heaven and the battle extended to cover much of Ae, the world that is. Mortals and the titanic Ancient ones found themselves drawn into the conflict. Unwittingly, their sorcereries came from Aisling Boccob, who had sided himself with the usurpers. The Loyal Gods were suddenly outnumbered, and many of the loyal Tercerian gods were defeated by living gods of blood and bone. An unfortunate side effect of this war was that the face of Ae was broken, dozens of races perished and the Ancient Races were decimated.

In the Celestial City, the Primerians discovered the depth of the First of Air’s treachery and they took up arms, those who still fought, and they utterly slew that most powerful of the gods. But it was too late, of the seven, one had been openly slain and three others had already been defeated or surrendered. The three who yet stood had no desire to see all of creation destroyed and in turn accepted imprisonment with the other defeated gods. It was widely known that such bondage would be short term at best as no vessel crafted by the Segundian gods could hold a Primerian God for long.

Dimmault is Forged
In the likeness of Aura, a sphere of iron was created by the Segundians and hung in the sky to trail forever behind Ae, blocked from the light of the Celestial City. The six remaining gods were bound to Dimmault as Boccob was bound to Aura, but they lock was set to open at a pre-ordained time. At the end of time, the vault would open. Seeing s aquick way out, the Primerians accepted the lock on their prison, but quickly discovered that the Key to the Vault, the Path of Chronomancy vanished. This key was taken by he who created magic, Boccob, and hidden within Aura. Boccob had been long in planning his revenge for his imprisonment, growing stronger and stronger as more and more mortals embraced magic. To gain release from Dimmault, the Primerials have only to reach forth and release the keys of Aura and first release Boccob.

Dimmault as Hell
As their bondage grew in length, the disposition of the gods contained within changed. Their essences mixed and created a hellish world in mockery of the Celestial City and Ae. Whereas rivers and oceans of Ae create and support life, the oceans of Dimmault are turbulent and corrosive, the mountains are jagged and steam with hatred. The forests there are carnivorous and the denizens who rose on that blackened world are termed demons and devils.

In technical parlance, a Demon is a god weaker than a Primerian who was imprisoned within Dimmault, and there were quite a few packed into the prison before it was locked. The number of true demons is fixed and can only decline in number. Devils, on the other hand, were born into the realm of Dimmault and know only anguish, suffering, and darkness.

The Age of K’TonEstimated Date 4000 BCE

Little remains of the first true empire in the history of Ae. Following the devastation of the War in Heaven, the surface of the planet was broken, continents started sliding around instead of being fixed in a low relief stasis. The recovery from the war was lengthy, but the K’tonians rose from the ashes and created an empire based not on magic, but on technology.

The Gear Age
Spinning gears, cogs, cam-shafts and other devices were very common, anything from a daVinci sketch would be a great inspiration for creating K’tonian clockwork devices. The mysterious race created everything from plebian windmills that drove waterpumps to strange ornithopters of airships that were both balloon based, and mechanical thrust based. It is known that initially the K’tonian culture was very enlightened and peaceful as there is little present in the form of arms or armor.

The K’tonians were at heart explorers and were drawn to the sea and the sky with equal passion. Their airships conquered the terrestrial oceans and discovered the continent of Saerith resting several thousand miles to the north-east of Aterrizar, their home continent. They also discovered hundreds of islands, the southern continent of Nagoma, and the equally distant supercontinent of Kelkivka. These ships even chartered the entrances too and from the Astral Sea and traveled across that omnipresent body of water to discover other realms.

What Does That Mean?

The K’tonians discovered the basics of interplanar travel as explaned in the Astral Sea submission. As explorers, such opportunities could not be explored and as such K’tonian legacies can be found on nearly every continent of Ae, as well as scattered through-out the rest of the cosmology.

The Vault Age
Near the end of the K’tonian Hegemony, which ended rather abruptly, the airships and explorers disappear and the first of the Vaults appear. These vaults are massive structures buried deep in the earth, each with its own sealed enviroment sustained by artificial sunlight created by sunstones, fields planted to recycle the air and water drawn through purifying banks of compacted sand. The most well known of the vaults was found at Nimz and was the font from which that city grew from. These vaults, closed for thousands of years by the time humans opened them contained the first legacies, basic machinery, that would start to revolutionize human life. but this social and scientific boom was tempered by the fact that the end of the K’tonian Hegemony was shrouded in secrecy and archeologists were cautious of unleashing some unknown horror that might destroy humanity. Of course there are dozens, if not hundreds of theories as to why the K’tonians vanished and even what they looked like and who they were.

Classified InformationUnfortunately, I am not at liberty to discuss the physiology of the K’tonians or the true cause of their demise. Sufficed to say they were NOT humans, but were humanoid, and the end of their Hegemony was also the termination of their race.

Su-Arcadia and the Elven EmpiresEstimated Date 2800 BCE

The elves first appeared in Aterrizar some 2,800 years BCE, being predated by Elven landings in Saerith roughly 100 years prior. Elves would arrive in large numbers in Aterrizar and Saerith for the next century with irregular arrivals of smaller numbers of their kin over the next 250 years. The elves were explorers and colonists, and unlike the normal inhabitants and natives of Aterrizar and Saerith, were immune to disease, old age, an healed twice as fast as a normal mortal.

Himloth and Su-Arcadia
The elves elected a High King and quickly established their dominions with skills in magic unrivaled by the native humans, dwarves, and orcs of the mainland. The Kingdom located in Aterrizar would be named Su-Arcadia and was based out of the growing city of Himloth. The location of modern Himloth is roughly 1300 feet underwater and more than 47 miles from shore north by north-east of Aterrizar. The elves there created the kingdoms of Stratia in the vicinity of modern Falhath, Lomar in the Midlands region, Gaelenon in the western peninsula, but never was able to make a lasting impression in the heat and stones of Calcobrina.

Meanwhile, in Saerith, the new Kingdom of Hy-Arcadia was founded and spread at lightning speed since much of Saerith was uninhabited by sentient life, only hold-overs and the last descendants of the Ancient Races. Saerithian lore recounts felling giants, slaying hydras, hunting manticores, and the like in the standard Elven sagas of swords and spears. The Su-Arcadian sagas recount the heavy use of Vloz Mzil Abannen, or the Blood of many allies method in facing it’s foes of orcish hordes, barbarian tribes, and the other denizens of Aterrizar.

Monuments of Ego
Elven dominion was expansive, with the elves settling and breaking nomadic humans to farming, training them to fight, and arming them with dwarven made metal goods, and then later allowing humans to learn metalworking and magic in general. This provided the elves with a ready and able population to support their desired way of life as well as serving as soldiers in an elven army. Humans would learn a low form of elvish, later adapting new languages drawn from their barbarian roots and using elven syntax and slang vocabulary. The elves didn’t care much about it, so long as the crops were harvested, the cattle were slaughters, the temples were built and the humans kept the riff-raff at bay.

While not exactly slaves, the elves treated humans and other mortal races as they would treat a favored hound, or a prized horse. It was quite a shock when the first half-elf was born of a human female. Most elves considered the act of mating with a human to be much like mating with an animal, albeit a smart one. This shocked the humans as no elven young were ever seen, no female elves were seen pregnant either. New elves came on ships and from nowhere else, and the elves NEVER spoke of where they came from, but were instead content to never return.

Classified InformationThere are a number of facts about the elves that I canno elaborate upon at the current time as I feel the information is both to sensitive to my novel to publish online, as it is highly at odds with current Elf-Lore. Basics facts that can be released is that elves do not sexually reproduce with each other in Aterrizar, and any human-Elf hybrid that reaches more than 15/16ths elven losses the ability to breed with an elf or another hybrid of 15/16ths or stronger elven blood. No elven children are known to exist.

The Terrestrial Gods
Eventually the powerful among the elves, the sorcerers and sorceresses, started demanding worship as living gods. This worship was demanded of their human subjects, as the elven magi had discovered means of gathering the magnessence generated by prayers and offerings to add to their own already formidable power. This elevated the magi even further above the ranks of the elf-kin. The new Sorcerer-Gods also had their followers breed with humans to create larger numbers of half elves. With lifespans measured in two to three centuries, the half-bloods would serve as lieutenants for the armies of the Magi. This expansion of power caused the break-up of the traditional powers and came roughly 2,400 years BCE.

Come the Fall
A number of factors contributed to the collapse of the elven empires, the predominant one being warring between the increasingly powerful Sorcerer-Gods. The elves were indeed immortal, but between few arriving on a regular basis, and losses from combat and assassination their numbers started to dwindle. The increasing numbers of half-elves slowed this trend, but in doing so weakened the individual power of the full-blooded elves. Humans also gained in magical power and replaced their dwarven forged bronze weapons with iron and steel which was far more dangerous in combat and many elves were allergic to the metal.

The uprisings against the elves were scattered across a 120 year period which saw the individual petty kingdoms dissolves as more and more of the elves were fought and slain, this would also spill over into violence between the half-elves and the humans, who saw the half-breeds as the lieutenants of the elves and equally guilty. The Elvin empires era ended when the Witch-Queen of Zehin slew the last Elven King of Lomar in the year 2213 BCE.

Of Half-Elves
The Half-Elves, with their longer lifespans and immunities fled from the strongholds of their Elven sires. Most formed into closed communities were ties of blood and bloodline were considered of paramount importance. Some of these broods would find permanent homes, such as those who settled Aohd and made peace with humans, while others would take up the nomad life and travel. These half-elves play a role much like gypsies from Earth, being attractive and alternately shunned, or openly attacked by human powers. Most modern half-elves keep their bloodlines roughly 30 to 40% elven by careful breeding of their own.

Of True Elves
The True elves all but vanished after the rise of Zehin, their numbers were all but annihilated in the fall of their empires. The fact that as often they assassinated each other did little to slow their demise. There are a few true elves left in Aterrizar, the number estimated to be roughly 1 dozen individuals. While a paltry number, these tend to be the most potent of magi, warriors, and the like and in the modern setting are in the vicinity of 3000+ years old.

The Zehin AscendancyEstimated Date 2200 BCE
Many of the Human coalitions that had formed during the wars against the elves collapsed soon after the cessation of hostilities. One power did not and it quickly gained in power. The Zehin Ascendancy rose like the proverbial phoenix on a pillar of magical flame. Where the K’tonians had their technology and the elves had their arcane and alien magic, the Zehini blended arcane sorcery and divine spellcasting together in a harmonious synergy. Little is known of the day to day activities of the Zehin Ascendancy, other than it was a time of Sorcerer Kings and Witch Queens and that even the demons of old bowed their cursed heads to the lords of magic and the mountains.

The Age of Theurges
The Ascendancy marks the begining of the ages of humanity as during this time, mankind explodes in terms of population, magical development and social advancements. The age of Theurges would last for two sidereal cycles, during which magical knowledge would reach untold levels of sophistication and power, levels that would never again be reached, even at the height of the Old World, which was yet to come.

Now it is not to say that the age of Theurges and the Ascendancy were a time of peace and prosperity. Rather, the diversification of magic saw a number of wizarding wars, genocides and atrocities against folk over their magical tradition or lack there of. Diabolism and Demonology were also rife and the Age of Theurges was noticably dark and bloody, but without question powerful and prosperous. It would be the interest in the infernal and the hellish realm of Dimmault that would eventually bring about the end of the age of true magic.

The Drowning
Somewhere in the central region of the Zehin Ascendancy, now under 180 feet of seawater, a faction of magi began to explore the potential of time manipulation. For a split second, they were able to manifest and gain a glimpse of the Loom of Time, but did not touch or attempt to manipulate the tool of the elder gods. This event did not go unnoticed, as the segundian A. Boccob is the custodian of the Loom and has little else to do in his golden prison, Aura. Messengers alerted the gods in the Celestial City and it was decided that the Ascendancy had reached too far and had to be punished for their deeds.

Zehin faced a challenge that their sorcery could not repeal, for as the gods beckoned, storm clouds gathered. THe rains began to fall, and they did not abate. The rivers and streams swoll with the seemingly endless torrent of rain, and it was only a matter of days before the towns and cities of the Ascendency were swallowed up by the rain. Much of the lands of the Zehin were turned into fetid swamps, disease became rampant, and the golden age of sorcery came to an abrupt and sodden end.

The Nahach EmpireEstimated Date 900 BCE

The Nightmare WarEstimated Date 1 CE*

Reconstruction Era1 - 240 CE

Century of War241 - 355 CE

The Kingdom of Trinistine200 - to current year

The Diet of Sangreal521 CE

BCE - Before Common Era
CE - Current Era

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I have a couple of posts like these. I consider them the meat and vegetables of a game setting, while the high ranking subs are the spice and the flavour. But we all know that eating only spice just won't do... We need the meat and those vegetables ;)

Clearly put your heart and soul into this. I almost skipped this due to the rather misleading description... I think enough time has passed that perhaps you could change that to something a little more positive? How about "Incredibly detailed and descriptive account of beginning of the world as we know it"?

Regions

Freetext

The Writing's on the Floor

The PCs encounter a strange set of artistic drawings done on the ground as they pass through a city. It has been done in chalks and no one saw who did it. Wizards might recognize the writing within the colored square as an obscure and dead language with a message stating that a prominent wizard and a retired bard have discovered how to populate Arcadia with the spirits of the dead!

Is it a local hoax, or are the PCs crossing the path of a very deranged and possibly dangerous mage?